


We Are Not Defending Arson

by alekszova



Series: play with fire [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Arson, Child Death, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 03:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18275042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: Chloe meets somebody that puts her on a path that greatly affects those around her.





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> “Silence is a protective coating over pain.”  
> We Were Liars - E. Lockhart

[ Connor ]

Chloe met Connor when she was fifteen. They attended the same high school for a year—briefly meeting when they shared a science class together. They might have been something more if she hadn't already been dating someone. She's glad they weren’t. They never would have been friends if she had dated him. It isn't possible for her—it isn't possible for Connor either. He falls in love with everyone just a little bit. It's a tragedy and a blessing rolled into one. He cares so deeply that he always ends up so terrifyingly hurt when they leave.

And they always, always leave.

Their friendship was brief. Passing notes and studying together after class. It led to her breakup, led to her crying for weeks on end when he moved away again. Disappearing from her life with the promise to send letters. And he did. Postcards whenever he moved, devoid of anything but addresses. Short letters detailing where he lived next. He was closed off. They both were. Her, too scared to allow a long-distance friendship and him too terrified to have more than a simple acquaintanceship.

It was different when he came back. Three years later and he was in Michigan once more, attending the same college as her. A coincidence. A happy one. Their friendship sparked again instantaneously, and she was never more content than when she was spending time with him. Like a void had been filled. Her best friend in the entire world.

Chloe never dated him. She never really had those feelings for him. It was difficult to understand why. He seemed so perfect sometimes. Cute and nice and smart. Funny and kind. Everything she wanted, but like a brother more often than not. A line that couldn’t be crossed, couldn’t be uncrossed if she did.

When they graduated, they moved to Alaska together. A dream from their teenage years about getting away from it all. They didn't follow each other there. They didn't convince the other. It was a mutual want they acted upon. Getting an apartment in Seward and moving in rooms right beside one another. Roommates for life, they often joked. Ten years of arguing and working and figuring out their life together. She wouldn't trade it for the world.

Leaving Connor was the most difficult thing she'd ever done. She didn't want to. She _had_ to. She had no choice in the matter. It was simply how it was going to be. She missed him the instant she stepped out the door, knowing she would likely never see him again. She felt guilty the moment she closed the door behind her, knowing he was going to succumb to tears before she would even reach her car. She wanted to turn around and apologize and pretend it was a joke, but even if she could manage to let Connor think she was cruel enough to play a joke on him like that, she couldn’t step away from what she had to do.

Chloe is not a monster. She wouldn't have left him like that if she thought she had any other choice. She wouldn't have lied to him if she thought he would understand.

This was just how it was going to be.

 

 

[ North ]

She met North through Connor. Over the course of their college years, Chloe watched him fall in love with Markus. She watched Markus fall in love with Simon. She watched their friend group disintegrate with the love triangle. Connor was forced out. Chloe couldn't remain. It was difficult to stay friends with a person that had hurt Connor so badly. It was difficult to interact with any of them without thinking about how often Connor cried on her shoulder, asking her why nobody ever wanted to stay with him, why nobody ever cared about him. She wanted to scream and say _she_ was there, _she'd_ _always_ be there—

And at the time, that was true. She didn't know that in a decade she would be one of the ones that made Connor feel like he was unlovable.

Her relationship with North was strange as a result of Connor and Markus. Hidden and private. Brief and nonexistent. By the time she allowed herself to admit that her and North could ever be anything, she saw what was happening with Markus and Simon. She saw how tormented Connor was. The two girls shared kisses. That was it. Too many nights spent making out and stopping before they went any further. Chloe too inexperienced, North too closed off. They were never anything more than friends with benefits—if it could be called such a thing.

When she moved to Alaska, she accepted that she wouldn't be able to revive that relationship—whatever it was—again. She dated others in Seward. Not many. It was strange bringing people home. She didn't like the concept of flings. She always wanted something solid, something lasting. Connor grounded her and nobody else provided the same kind of happiness she wanted. No butterflies in her stomach. No flutter in her heart. She felt dead and empty and worthless and she couldn't understand why. It wasn't Seward. It wasn't Connor. It was—

North.

Not the first girl she was with, not even the first girl she let herself daydream about having a life with. Just the first girl, first person, that overwhelmed her with the possibility of happiness. Somebody that could understand her. Somebody that clicked so well with her that losing her as a friend or a girlfriend or just simply a presence in her life, hurt so badly she sometimes hated Markus for ever looking at someone other than Connor.

It took four years before they talked again. A business trip to Michigan turned into visiting family turned into meeting North again. A night spent at a bar laughing and exchanging numbers and a few minutes spent kissing her again and realizing just how badly she wanted _more._

Long distance wasn't easy. Emails and instant messages aren't the same. Love letters and presents mailed to one another can't fill the desire to be there. Video chats and phone calls are nothing to being able to see someone face-to-face, to hear their voice, to touch their skin and kiss them again and again. North didn't like to think about Someday. But Chloe was obsessed. Someday they'll live together. Someday they'll wake up next to each other. Someday Chloe will be able to put facts she knows of North's life to use. Her favorite coffee—hazelnut—prepared in the morning for her. Grocery shopping and laughing at stupid jokes. Holding her hand until North has to yank it away because she needs to use it.

Someday they were meant to be together, but it also meant leaving Connor. It meant leaving Alaska. It meant sacrificing a lot for a girl she loved more than anything in the entire world.

She didn't know when she left Alaska that it would end like this. She didn't know she was never going to return and that it wouldn't even be because she left to grow old with North in Michigan. She thought that her days would end watching the snow fall in Petoskey. Swimming in Lake Michigan during the summer. Watching the leaves turn orange and red in the fall, making the Tunnel of Trees a magical place to be.

She didn't know it would be like this. She didn't know it had to end like this.

 

 

[ Nines ]

It was impossible for her to be friends with Connor and not be friends with Nines. The two were a package deal. She was just closer to Connor than she ever was with Nines, until everything changed. Days spent studying with him close by, silently participating. She never questioned why he was so quiet. It wasn't as if he was entirely mute. He spoke occasionally. Nine words at a time. A limit to his speech. She appreciated the quiet they could share. She liked watching him interact with Connor. Glances and looks used instead of words. Connor always intuitively knew what Nines needed and when he needed it.

Losing Nines was difficult. He wrote detailed letters to her—different from Connor's. He found it easier to communicate with her through the letters and that was the sole basis of their friendship. Ink on paper traveling thousands of miles to her hands where she returned each and every thought and story and syllable with one of her own.

Nines came to college with Connor. Before they parted ways, they were always together. Their friendship wasn't the same in real life. Something shifting when they couldn't rely on written words to keep them afloat. They stumbled and fell and became the same as they were in high school. Connor and Chloe a duo, Nines a third wheel. Even when Connor started dating Markus, they didn't recover. She liked to go to parties, spend the nights kissing North in the back or dancing with Josh or Simon in the hopes that it would relieve the stress causing fractures in her being.

Nines was quiet and lonely, and the last time they spoke was two days before his relationship with Connor cracked. A late night where he sat drunken on the bed beside her, the only time he ever drank as far as she knew, and he spilled out so many words she couldn't keep up.

He hated his nickname. He hated the reminder that he wasn't Niles anymore but instead Nines. That the shift in his life only ever reaffirmed and reminded him that once upon a time there were three little boys and now there was only two.

A few days later, their mother died. Connor ran away from Nines as much as he could. When they graduated and moved away together, she tried her best to keep in contact with him. N0999s and Chlofleur exchanging messages and emails back and forth. It was never going to be the same way it once was. Chloe was given information she didn't know what to do with.

She is grateful that he helped her. She still doesn't understand why.

 

 

[ Hank ]

She was the one to meet Hank first. Not Connor, even if the majority of her friends where always met through Connor first. The ones from high school faded away, the ones from college only speaking to her and not him. A strange excising of one person from their group, mutual between Markus and Connor. Ending it as they parted ways. Connor never grouped Josh or Simon when he listed off the people that abandoned him—maybe he always thought they were never his friends to begin with, only there to placate Markus asking for them to be.

But when it came to Alaska, when it came to meeting Hank, it was Chloe who met him first. A chance meeting, as all of her life was. She was a girl with a life that came together through coincidences and luck—bad or good. She hasn’t decided which was Hank yet.

Chloe was working as a florist. He came in for a bouquet and she was told by her coworker that he always did. Every year, he had one made with his wife’s favorite flowers. Likely left on her grave. She never found out, but she preferred it this way. A sign of remorse and love for a dead one. She didn’t have the with her parents. When they died, she never returned to the cemetery. Every time she set foot towards it, she felt her entire body freeze up like a bucket of ice had replaced her insides.

Their friendship, however, only formed because of Connor. Working with his son while they both trained to be detectives at the police department in Seward. Detective Stern and Detective Anderson. People always got them confused with how close Connor was with Hank. The two spent more time together than they did with Cole. Like he was a ghost. Like he was never really there. Chloe only met him once and was convinced he was a corpse. Some strange being raised from the dead. His hand was so cold when she shook it, dark circles under his eyes. Dead or drugged or exhausted. One of the above.

Cole left. Suddenly, in the middle of the night. She supposes he must have left a note for Hank, must have told Connor something. But when she mentioned Cole, Connor acted like he barely knew him, and she went back to the theory of _ghost._ Who can forget a boy like Cole Anderson?

It wasn’t until after he left that she saw how broken Hank really was. It started with the first few years they were friends. Chloe and Connor joking about Hank being their drunken uncle. Silly, inconsequential jokes. Things they didn’t believe were in bad taste because they never believed it was true. Yes, Hank drank. No, he wasn’t an alcoholic. Was he? Was it that bad? Had they overlooked the signs?

When Cole was gone, the jokes started dying on their lips when they would find him passed out at his house, when Connor came home with stories about how Hank was too drunk to do his job, about how his badge was being threatened to be taken away, talks of him getting asked to retire instead of firing him to save face.

They were a team—Chloe and Connor. They always were, and when it came to Hank, they tried their hardest. Trying to help him, trying to do whatever they could think of. Taking away the booze in every hiding spot only to notice more a few days later. Stealing his wallet and his credit cards only to find that he had cash hidden elsewhere. Checking him into rehab centers only to discover they didn’t work because he’d find a way out or relapse the second he was released. Nothing seemed to help and everything they did only seemed to make him angrier.

When she heard the story about Connor finding a gun in his house, of him playing Russian roulette by himself—

She knew it was a matter of time.

Maybe she stopped fighting as hard because of it. Some small piece of her giving up, giving in. She hates herself for it. She hates herself for not being there when Connor was shoved away, called a liar for ever caring for Hank to begin with. She hates herself for leaving Connor a few days after Hank’s suicide to come to Michigan.

But there is nothing she can do about it now. No amount of apologies will bring Hank back. No amount of time spent sitting at his grave, wishing and hoping he would rise up again will actually allow for it to happen.

Hank was like a father to her and she felt like she was being orphaned all over again.

She didn’t leave to avoid dealing with Hank’s death—it was simply an addition to her abandonment.


	2. Felicity

Chlofleur met Golden_birdblue five years ago on a chatroom website centered around ghost encounters. The two had vastly different stories. Golden_birdblue had a sister that died, felt like she kept seeing her everywhere. And Chloe—she was never quite sure if Cole was real or not. They talked, exchanged a few details so they could keep the discussion when they logged off the website. And then—

They talked nearly every day. She told North about her. _Felicity._ The was the name that was given to her, followed shortly by:

_Call me Eli._

She heard about everything that happened to Felicity in the course of their five-year friendship. Half a decade spent learning about all the terrible things that her father did to her. All of the abuse. All of the scars. All of the death.

Her sister died when she was only fifteen. Her half-brother disappeared less than a year later when their house went up in flames. She was the only one left. All alone again like she was for the first few months of her life. She had never been alone before. Eli always had someone with her.

Chloe heard about the drug addictions, the need for alcohol, the suicidal tendencies.

_Our family is fucked,_ she said once, _I’m still trapped here._

She couldn’t leave. She couldn’t go anywhere. As long as she was there, she could protect her mother. Thirty-something years old and still stepping in the way of fists to protect someone who should have been protecting her. It was always like that. Eli never making up her mind about whether or not to blame her mother for what happened, what is still happening.

It took two years to find out that Eli was not Felicity. When she heard about the half-brother, the one who went missing, the one who was declared dead, it was not difficult to make the leap from _Felicity_ to _Eli_ to _Elijah Kamski._

She knew, but she didn’t say anything. She continued to pretend, to play along, even though she had questions.

Questions like: _why stay?_

But the Kamski name is not something that’s easy to run away from. There are plenty of conspiracy theorists online thinking they can still find the little sister that died. _Felicity Kamski._ Dead at thirteen, life drowned out with a pill bottle, name stolen by her brother twenty years later. Even Gavin is still hunted for by people posting on forums. Finding lookalikes in California, Minnesota, New York. People convinced the ghost of the little girl was in their bedroom, that they saw the boy setting fire to their house in their dreams. That it meant something.

 

She thought he was just fantasizing at first. When he started to list out the details of the way he’d kill his father. It started small, of course, just saying he wanted him dead. And then sometimes she would wake up and see a message on her computer, saying how much he hated him, putting in so much detail it was frightening. It was terrifying. Eli _terrified_ her.

She indulged him sometimes—like a bad influence. Like a girl giving an alcoholic a sip of their drink. She let him talk to her about it. Hoped that they weren’t real plans, hoped that typing it out would reduce the likelihood that Eli would go through with it.

But when he said it was real, she ran.

She left Connor behind. She didn’t think she’d be coming back. She truly didn’t. Not then, not when she called him a few days later, pretending she was seeing the sights. Giving him random names of places that she passed by. A museum. A diner. A laundromat. She didn’t think about it at the time. She just wanted to stop Eli.

There are things that people do that they can fix, change, apologize for. Eventually make it up and balance out the world. She believed that Eli’s father deserved punishment. She believed even that he deserved to die. She didn’t believe that Elijah should have that on his conscious, have one of the rare unforgivable things in the world embedded in his soul.

When she showed up at the house, he didn’t know who she was. She had to introduce herself. Spill out the details about how she knew who _he_ was. It took some convincing. Showing the chatlogs on her phone, showing her ID to prove her name is Chloe.

 

They played pretend at first. Going out to eat at a restaurant he loved, that he told her about over their conversations. They ate ice cream in the park together even though it was far too cold for it. They pretended that she wasn’t here to stop him. Instead—

They talked. They laughed. They were friends for a brief space in time.

And then they argued.

For hours, they argued. On and off, Chloe trying her best to explain her side, trying to explain that she understood everything. Elijah’s dad deserved death, he deserved worse than death, but there’s—

There’s no reason Eli had to be the one to do it. She repeated that to him over and over again. _Get him in jail._ Just send him to jail. Reveal the bruises, tell the stories of what he did to someone official instead of her. Help his mother get a divorce, help her prepare to testify in court.

_And destroy the Kamski name?_

That’s what it always came back to.

Destroying the Kamski name. Holding it up to something pristine and polished. A company that he could take over, a company that wouldn’t fall apart because his dad was in prison for abuse and molestation.

Sides—

There would be no peace until he was dead. There would always be that terrible monster alive in the back of his head. At least he could quiet it if his dad was in the ground.

She is still unsure of how Eli convinced her. She doesn’t know how she found herself nodding, saying _I’ll help you._ She doesn’t know how anything happened that night, just that everything went terribly, terribly wrong.

 

It was the perfect weekend. That’s what Elijah told her. His father would be working late, his mother out of town. Every night before bed, his mother and father would share a drink from the wine bottle he had picked out. They would talk about their day, turn in to sleep. Elijah used to spy on them, hiding in the hallway with his ear pressed to the door in case something happened. A gauge of how mad or happy his father was, trying to decipher how the next day would turn out. His father still drinks, even when his mother is out of town.

She helped him crush the sleeping pills. A bottle of them that Eli uses to help sleep at night, suffocate the nightmares to get enough rest to be able to function the next day. They poured it into the bottle. Enough to knock him out. Maybe enough to kill him. Not enough to be happy about it.

They hid and they waited and they waited and then—

They set the place on fire.

Let him burn like Eli’s brother did. Let him suffer like Eli’s sister did.

It wasn’t until they were standing outside and the car pulled up that they realized the person passed out under the covers of the bed wasn’t Elijah’s father.

It wasn’t until they saw the car in the driveway, so similar to his own, didn’t belong to the dad.

It wasn’t until Chloe saw Eli fall to the ground and press a hand to his mouth to stifle the scream did she realize that it was his mother tucked under the blankets. That it was her body that would be discovered.

She was frozen in place long enough that when she noticed Eli was missing, her heart only begun to start beating again. Like she was the one that had died for a few minutes there while the information processed through her head.

They soaked that bed in gas. They left the match there first. His mother was not still alive. There was no possibility that she could be. The only saving grace that either of them could have was that she would have been knocked out by the pills.

Chloe ran after him, dragged him from the fire. Rolled across the snow-covered grass to get rid of the flames engulfing her arms. They didn’t scream. They couldn’t be found by the firefighters, by his father. And then—

She ran.

 

There is little someone can do to make up for the fact they helped accidentally kill the wrong person. Eli said there was nothing to forgive. They didn’t check. They just assumed. They saw a black car in the driveway and they heard the bottle of wine open, the sound it made as the liquid poured. They hid and didn’t look to see whose feet were making the movements across the floorboards. They didn’t check to see who was under the blankets. They didn’t turn on the lights. They just poured the gasoline and struck the match and ran.

His mother wasn’t meant to be home. Her flight wasn’t meant to leave until the next day. _She wasn’t meant to be home._

Chloe was hospitalized for a short period of time in which Eli never visited her during. He couldn’t. He kept a low profile while the investigation went on. She wonders if he hoped as much as she did that somehow it would all be pinned on the father. That somehow, he would go to jail in the end. Maybe it would ruin the Kamski name, maybe it would destroy the family more than it was already broken, but at least it would be something.

She couldn’t tell Connor.

She couldn’t call North.

She kept quiet, texting her girlfriend infrequently, refraining from saying absolutely anything to the boy who had already lost Hank. It was terrible and awful, but she feared the moment she heard his voice, even North’s voice, that everything would slip from her lips. The truth a story that she wouldn’t be able to hide.


	3. After

[ Nines ]

They two of them have always been a strange push and pull of close and far. Physically close, emotionally distant. Physically far away, emotionally tied together in a string of knots. Notes and emails and texts always binding the two of them together. Not words spoken out loud.

When Chloe came to him, she didn’t expect for him to let her stay. But he did, and he didn’t ask what happened to her. He didn’t press on the situation at all. She is eternally thankful for it. She doesn’t know if she is capable of lying. She doesn’t know if she has a story she can tell.

She decided when she went to Detroit to find Elijah, that she didn’t know if she’d come back. She decided, the moment she was going to help him, that she couldn’t. She would lose Connor and North trying to save Elijah’s soul. Maybe that is a sacrifice she shouldn’t have made.

She stayed with Nines while she recovered. Burn marks on her arms from where her clothes caught fire trying to save Eli from killing himself. No story she could come up with, even if she had the emotional capacity to lie to the most important people in her life, would ever truly explain this.

Not that anyone really knew Felicity was Elijah.

But they could make those connections as easily as she could, couldn’t they?

And how could she explain this? How could she explain that she accidentally killed someone? The wrong person? That she was going to kill anyone at all? That she somehow, along the way, decided it was okay?

Her mind is a mess of thoughts and emotions and she doesn’t know what say anymore, what to think, what to lie about and what to tell the truth about.

Nines never asked. She healed in the peace and quiet. Their friendship strange but not tumultuous. Not anymore. Maybe knowing each other for as long as they have managed to balance out the parts that needed it. She thinks, maybe, he has his own secrets, too. Maybe they are just as dark and twisted as hers now.

She’ll never know. She’ll never ask. She’ll grant him that much kindness in return.

 

 

[ Connor ]

She didn’t expect Connor to come after her. She didn’t expect to say something cryptic to him and have him come running. She didn’t expect him to show up at Nines’ house and embrace in her a hug that revived all the pain in her arm, in her body, in her heart and soul.

But she’s grateful.

She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to tell him what she did, what Eli did. She has no idea if she’s capable of speaking those words anymore, and she understands exactly why Nines is the way he is. Why he can’t speak at all. Her words come out infrequently now, too. Half broken like she’s terrified of every single syllable betraying her. Everything she says feels wrong.

Connor is still her best friend. He doesn’t know, and maybe that’s why he’s still with her. Why he didn’t abandon her. Or maybe Gavin is the reason he can overlook something like this, if he knows any part of it.

She isn’t stupid.

She was best friends with Elijah.

She knows exactly who Gavin is.

Maybe that’s why she hasn’t been able to speak a single word to him. She knows too much about him. The pair are so imbalanced every time she sees him her mind freezes, blanks, and she runs away. Words directed to Connor about needing to leave. _Have to see North. I’m so sorry I can’t stick around._

Connor thinks she hates Gavin. She doesn’t. But every time she sees his face she remembers his mother’s, his sister’s, his father’s. More so—

She remembers Elijah’s. She didn’t have enough time with him. Five years isn’t enough. They lost each other. They lost everything.

When she read about his suicide, she broke in silence, had to fix all of the cracks by herself.

So she watches from afar when it comes to Gavin and Connor. She sees how happy they are together, how often they smile in each other’s presence. How Connor still has this lingering fear that someday, Gavin will leave him, but how it disappears a little more every time they’re together. She helps him pack when he moves out. She drives with him to their place—a little house in Anchorage where a dog runs around the backyard, where a cat lounges on the front porch, where the shelves line the walls and are filled with books and plants.

She’s there at their wedding, the realness only a pretense. Gavin isn’t supposed to be alive. It isn’t legal, but she isn’t meant to know that. It’s still a nice gesture. Watching them cut the cake, watching Gavin shove it into Connor’s face and them laughing.

Always laughing.

So, so happy.

She hopes that if the supernatural is real, if heaven is real, Eli can see how happy the two of them are together.

 

 

[ North ]

The first time Chloe sees North after, it’s been three and a half months and it takes her exactly five minutes before the truth comes undone. Like a present that was once wrapped, ribbon pulled, sides falling down, revealing the grotesque nature of her heart now. Blackened and charred and burnt. _Here it is,_ she wants to say, _do you still love me?_

North doesn’t say anything. Not for a long time. She just lets Chloe talk. Spiraling back further and further in time. Not a few months ago, when she first arrived in Michigan, not a few days before when she still hadn’t called her, had only texted her to make sure she knew Chloe was still alive, because no matter how terribly she feels she can’t let go of the one person that wouldn’t understand, but would still love her despite it.

She had hope and for a moment, it is crushed. Every time she stops speaking and North doesn’t say anything, she starts up again. Back further and further. How Eli used to talk about killing his father. How Eli used to tell her things that made her sick to her stomach, how many of those nights she spent crying and wishing she could _do something._ And then—

Back to the forums and the chatrooms. Ghost stories.

Cole is a different problem that she doesn’t know how to explain. Connor doesn’t seem to remember him. Hank refused to talk about him. It was like he never existed. It was like he was only ever there to bring the three of them together. Like Cole’s last few moments with them was an attempt at saving Hank’s life.

And she can’t talk about that yet, either. How she failed him. How she failed everyone. People keep dying on her. People keep dying around her. She thinks it was the one thing that connected her and Connor and Nines throughout the years. Death and chaos linking souls. Like they were seeking each other out.

North didn’t say anything. Not a single word the first night. Not after _you’re alive, thank God, I love you—_

And then nothing.

She stood up, walked to a room, closed the door. Chloe heard it lock in place, watched as the strip of light around the door turned dark.

And she waited.

Waited until morning came, until she woke up to North stepping over her where she fell asleep laying in front of the door. They sat across from each other at a table, North sipping on coffee that Chloe carefully prepares for her. _Hazelnut, right?_ Chloe with nothing, terrified that she has no one.

And then North speaks.

_Will you marry me?_

Will you marry me?

Like it’s that easy to brush a murder under the rug, as if it is that easy to pretend the Kamski family wasn’t ruined when she showed up in Eli’s life.

_It was ruined long before that._

Long, long before that.

And there is very little left now. One tiny fragment, hidden under a rug, hidden away in Alaska with a boy he loves more than anything in the entire world.

And her, here, with North. Forgiven. Or maybe not forgiven. Just not hated. Allowed to live even if she can hardly live with herself.

“Will you marry me?”

_Yes. Yes. Yes._

A year from then, with a ring on her finger and living across the hall from Connor, laughing with him and pretending that nothing happened, she packs her things along with Connor’s. The two of them pass memories across the hall, giving trinkets and photos to each other to take with them. Him off to Alaska, her off to Michigan in a house with her girl, her fiancé, her Someday wife.

They attend Connor and Gavin’s wedding. A hundred pictures are taken when they aren’t looking, blurry and a little bit off. But perfect. Moments when they’re smiling, moments when they’re dancing, moments when they’re so happy it feels like it infects her a little bit. So overjoyed for the two of them.

When she visits, she finds some of them hanging up on the walls among pictures of their dogs and cats, on the wall space that hasn’t been overtaken by plant life or books. A few months later, when she marries North, the day repeats itself.

Pretty white dresses, flowers upon flowers, a wedding in Michigan with a girl she loves more than anything in the entire world and she hopes—

She hopes that if Eli is a ghost, if he can see them, that he doesn’t hate her for being happy, that he knows how terribly she still feels. The scars on her arm will never go away, they are accompanied with phantom pain, and even if they did, her soul is scratched and her heart is bruised and there is little that can be done to make those go away. Nothing, not even the kisses North leaves against her arm, the reassurances against her skin, is going to make it okay. It will never balance out.

Sometimes, she crosses paths with Gavin when she leaves flowers on Eli’s grave. Just like how she passes by Connor when she leaves flowers for Hank, when she leaves flowers for Cole and for the long-lost little brother of Nines and Connor. Forever surrounded by death, always surrounded by regret.

She loves him.

She misses him.

She wishes she had done more to save him.

But she will try to live on without him, as hard as it may be.

**Author's Note:**

> [hmu on my tumblr](https://norchloe.tumblr.com/)


End file.
